Efforts are made in the medical industry to reduce animal tests for the evaluation of the effects of substances which are candidates for incorporation into medicines. The reasons for this is i.a. the high costs and the comparatively long time needed for the experiments. Moreover, the extrapolation of the results from animal studies to humans does not always reflect the actual effects in humans.
There is an obvious need for screening methods which give species and tissue specific, comparatively reliable prediction of the effects of drug candidates.
In cases where the mechanism of action of drug candidates is known at the cellular level, it is possible to study the effects of the candidates in vitro. In such cases it should be possible to study the effects on cell lines derived from different types of tissues, and thus get a pattern of the effects in the studied types of tissues.
The present invention provides a tool for the prediction of the antagonistic versus agonistic effects of a receptor-binding substance on different kinds of tissues in a selected species.